


Which In Our Case We Have Not Got

by spuffyduds



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-30
Updated: 2009-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-04 00:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fred's trying to figure out a way to capture Angelus.  But Charles and Wes and Faith are being so annoying she might have to kill <i>them</i>, first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Which In Our Case We Have Not Got

**Author's Note:**

> This was done in a tearing hurry as a birthday fic, and I can't remember if I've quite got the timing right on all the relationships! If I don't, uh, spank me and call it an AU. Also, Fred indulges in some slight male-bashing. She is tired and stressed and cranky and not speaking for the author. ;-)

Fred couldn't figure out why Faith was even _here_.

Well, here in L.A., yes. She was doing them a big favor, trying to help them catch Angelus—but why was she _here_? In the research room? _Not researching?_

_Really_ not researching. Faith had her boots up on the conference table, and she was singing something halfway under her breath, something with lots of uh-_huhs_ in it, and wiggling enough to make her wheeled chair dance a little. And bouncing a rubber band ball off the wall, over and over, thwack thwack thwack.

Fred kept getting derailed from her research by imagining vivid scenarios in which she ripped Faith's head—clean—_off_.

It wasn't so bad earlier in the evening when she had the boys to talk to. But now they were both asleep good and hard. Never mind about the big bad beasts, Fred, we've got to have our beauty sleep, apparently.

Charles—bless his heart—wasn't that much help to start with, with the heavy research. He moaned every time he hit one of the rhymed prophecies. "I think they change the meaning just so the rhythm works out," he said. "Like, they don't care if Angelus eats our lungs, as long as they get to sound like Snoop Dogg. And, oh, Jesus, this one's got f's for esses again!"

"Hush, Charles," Fred said absently, and he groaned and went facefirst into Ye Dreade Booke of Monfterf, and the next time she looked over at him he was _out_, and she had to slide the (priceless, probably) folio out from under his face before he drooled on a succubus.

Wes lasted longer, and would maybe eventually have found something useful if he'd kept at it, dammit. He was the one with all the dead-language skills, not Fred—physics wasn't that much use with vampires. And Wes kept turning up _leads_, it's just that they all petered out. He'd looked up once from a Greek text, eyes shining, saying, "Oh, all we need for the long-distance reensoulment is a—oh, wait, ambrosia from the table of the gods. Which, uh, we haven't got."

And then he got both Fred and Faith excited with a snippet in an Arimathean dialect, Fred because she thought maybe she'd get to go to sleep sometime this week and Faith because it sounded like she'd get to use a weapon for Angelus-subduing, but then Wes figured out that they needed to actually have Excalibur. "Which, in our case…" "Right," the girls sighed, and they went back to research. (Faith's research seemed to consist mostly of finding all the naked black-mass woodcuts, holding them up for Wes and Fred's viewing pleasure, and saying, "Holy shit!")

And then he cross-referenced and found something in some compilation of insectile demon prophecies, and that sounded really promising for a while until he kept translating and worked out that at the crucial moment in the spell for vampire capture they each needed to rip off a part of their chitinous exoskeletons. "Which in our case we have not got," Fred said wearily, and Wes nodded and went back to work, and it was shortly after that that she looked over at him and he was out too.

"_Men_," she said bitterly, and Charles gave a whuffly snore and Wes flinched and clearly said, "Christopher Robin BEES!"

She went over and patted Wes' head a little to get whatever dream _that_ was out of it.

When she looked up Faith was grinning at her. "What?" Fred said.

"Nothing. Don't blame you. Never thought it'd happen, but he turned out kinda hot, didn't he?"

"We haven't—we're NOT."

"Fine, right, whatever. Hey, check it out, naked coven! Molesting goats!"

Fred rolled her eyes at the woodcut and went back to her book. "You know," she said, "you don't actually need to be here. You could go…rest up for tomorrow's battles."

"Yeah, right," said Faith, and to Fred's surprise she sounded a little—hurt? Faith?!? "Wake up the other Einstein, there, and you guys do all the thinking. You're the brains, me and Gunn are the bruisers."

"Charles is _not_ just—" Fred snapped, and stopped because Faith suddenly broke out into a huge grin.

"What, him TOO? Damn, girl! And you look so _shy_!"

"We are not—I mean, we HAVE, but we're not—you have a _filthy_ mind," Fred said, and clapped her hand over her mouth because that was her mama talking, right there.

"Well, _yeah_. So, hat trick? Three for three?"

"Uh…what?" Fred said. "What are you…you mean…oh my _lord_. Um. I didn't think I was your…type."

"I just got out of _ prison_," Faith said. "Right now? My type is, you know, human. Ish. Uh, mammals, anyway."

"Well," Fred said. "_Thanks_. But…no thank you. I'm just….I'm tired." And suddenly she was, more even than a second before, more even than the last five nights they'd been up until four desperately researching, so tired she couldn't stop talking.

"I'm tired of these stupid prophets and their stupid rhymes and their stupid fucking orgy woodcuts and I'm tired of being scared of Angelus and tired of missing Angel and tired of Charles wanting what we had and Wes wanting what we haven't and both of them wanting to kill each other and I'm tired of their stupid arguments and their stupid testosterone and their stupid _penises_."

Then suddenly Faith was right there, hunkered next to Fred's chair and smiling up at her, not a smirky grin anymore but a really pretty smile, and Faith was raising her eyebrows and saying, "Which, in our case?"

And Fred said, "We have not got," and leaned down and kissed her.

They didn't make it any further than the next room. But it turned out that both the boys were really, really heavy sleepers.

 

\--END--


End file.
